Chapter 1: Introduction
The Unexamined Life is Not to Be Lived: The Life of the Signorant Sage
Chapter 1: Introduction
Imagine this:
Shipwrecked (I)
Two hundred brave souls set off in a replica of a 16th century sailing ship across the Pacific. The ship is authentic in every detail with no modern technology used for propulsion or navigation. A strict no-modern-technology policy is also enforced on its captain, crew, and passengers. This means no computers, cell phones, or any other electronic devices. The journey starts off well: good weather and a light wind propels the ship. The captain estimates that with any luck, they will make landfall in two to three weeks. But, alas, their luck does not hold: a violent storm takes everyone by surprise. The captain and crew battle the storm for twenty hours. Finally, the battle is lost: a rogue wave capsizes the ship. Thankfully, many are fortunate enough to board lifeboats. The rough seas continue for two days, and several lifeboats containing dozens of people each are lost. On the morning of the third day, the survivors are greeted by a most welcome sight: land. Those well enough row the lifeboats against strong winds and currents to shore. Although glad to be alive, the survivors are not out of danger: the island is deserted, and the survivors have few supplies, no shelter, and little prospect for rescue for the foreseeable future. With about two dozen injured among the 102 survivors, the priority is to care for them. Sadly, the ship’s doctor is not among the survivors, and so the most senior surviving crew member, the second mate, calls for anyone with medical training to come forward.
Reluctantly, Modesta steps forward. Modesta took a first-aid course to qualify for a lifeguard job that she held for a couple of years as a teenager more than a decade ago. Modesta whispers to her friend that she has only the tiniest bit of medical training and she hopes (and prays) there will be others who are more qualified. To her immense relief, another candidate comes forward who claims that she is a trained medical professional. She announces to the group that although she is not licensed as a doctor, she would like everyone to call her “Doctor Huberta”.
The second mate asks Modesta and Huberta to step aside for a few minutes while the rest of the survivors discuss the situation. After a few minutes they call Huberta back for a few more questions. The group then asks Huberta to step aside again so that they can meet privately to discuss their candidacies. To both Modesta’s and Huberta’s immense surprise, the group elects Modesta to be the group’s medic. Modesta is flummoxed by the decision and protests that she should not be chosen. The second mate says that, despite her limited medical training, the group has decided that she is the most qualified to be the survivors’ medic. And that their decision is final. Modesta acquiesces and immediately sets to work helping the injured survivors.
Still shocked, Modesta later asks her best friend amongst the survivors in private how the group came to the decision to make her the medic rather than Huberta. Her friend tells her that in the group’s discussion, someone mentioned that they had no information about Huberta’s medical training. The only information they had was Huberta’s self-assessment of her medical knowledge, namely, Huberta’s claim to be a “medical professional”. When they brought Huberta back for additional questioning, they found out that Huberta’s medical training was the same as Modesta’s: both had just two days of remedial first-aid training. Someone suggested that the group should flip a coin to decide who should be made the medic. However, someone else pointed out that Modesta had more knowledge relevant to being the medic: Modesta was cognizant of her limited medical knowledge, while Huberta was ignorant about just how ignorant she is in terms of medical knowledge. Huberta was under the illusion that she knew a lot more than she in fact knew. Someone mockingly suggested the nickname: “Hubristic Huberta”. Most of the group agreed that Huberta’s ignorance about her medical ignorance could easily lead Huberta into making serious medical errors. Modesta, on the other hand, was fully cognizant of her limited medical knowledge and so was a much better choice.
Sorry to say, but you are almost certainly like Huberta when it comes to the question of how to live your life. Or so I will argue.
To become more like Modesta requires a Socratic journey of self-discovery. The journey is this: Socratic examination of your life will reveal that you have a number of philosophical beliefs that matter very much to you. Socratic examination also yields an unsettling conclusion: you are almost certainly wrong about some of these beliefs, and so you are almost certainly wrong about some things that matter very much to you. These errors are the result of the hubris that plagues humanity: almost everyone takes themselves to be wise about philosophical matters that are important to them when they are in fact not wise. Fortunately, at least on an individual level, there is something we can do to combat this plague: Socratic examination of our lives can reduce our tendency to hubris, and philosophical examination can help us reduce—although, not eliminate—the risk of making harmful mistakes about those things which are important to us. So, the bumper sticker for this book is this:
Socratic philosophical examination → less hubris → leads to better reasoning about our lives → fewer and less egregious life mistakes
The arrow is short for “results in”. Admittedly, this may be the least catchy bumper sticker in human history. Still, it has the virtue of being true. Or so I will argue.
1.1 Three Grades of Wisdom
The shipwrecked thought experiment illustrates an important distinction between three grades of wisdom. When it comes to medical wisdom, for example, someone is wise about medicine if she has detailed and systematic knowledge about the medical arts and knows how to apply this knowledge to treat patients. Unfortunately for the survivors, with the loss of the ship’s physician they lack anyone with the highest level of medical wisdom.
Modesta and Huberta are mostly ignorant about medical knowledge. But while neither Modesta nor Huberta is wise in the ways of medicine, clearly Huberta is less wise than Modesta in at least one respect: In addition to her lack of medical wisdom, Huberta is also ignorant about her ignorance, while Modesta is at least wise about the fact that she is not wise about medical arts. The survivors are right to be wary of Huberta’s overconfidence, and they are right to choose Modesta for her greater wisdom.
Two and half millennia ago, Plato noted the distinction we see between Modesta’s and Huberta’s ignorance. Following Plato, we will refer to the former as ‘single ignorance’ (or ‘signorance’ for short) and the latter as ‘double ignorance’ (or ‘dignorance’ for short).[1] Modesta is ignorant about the medical arts. Huberta is ignorant about the medical arts, and she is ignorant about her own ignorance.
The moral of the shipwrecked analogy applies more generally: when we want someone to make a wise decision about X, we prefer those who are wise about X. If there is no one who is wise about X, then typically we prefer those who are Signorant about X rather than those who are Dignorant about X. Consider the case where your car is broken. Obviously the first choice would be to hire a mechanic who is wise about what is wrong with your car. Perhaps you share with me the misfortune of dealing with Dignorant mechanics:
The Dignorant Mechanic
Your car mysteriously won’t start sometimes, and so you call a friend for a jump start. You take it to a mechanic, and he says he knows exactly what is wrong with your car: it needs a new battery. The new battery, however, does not resolve the problem: sometimes the car starts and sometimes not. When you take it back to the mechanic, he says he knows exactly what is wrong: it needs a new alternator. Two days later, you get your car back from the shop. But the next morning you encounter the same problem: sometimes it starts, sometimes it doesn’t. You take it back for a third time, the mechanic says he knows exactly what is wrong: your car needs a new regulator. Your car works for two days and then won’t start. This time you take it to a new mechanic. He looks at your car and hears about the previous repairs and says that he doesn’t know what is wrong with your car, but he will investigate. Eventually your new mechanic discovers that the problem lay with a corroded ground wire that was hidden under a clamp: a twenty-dollar part caused the problem. But of course, the dignorance of the first mechanic cost you thousands in unnecessary parts and labor as well as much inconvenience. You wish you had taken it to the Signorant mechanic in the first place.
(The mechanics in this example are based on a real-life example starring yours truly.)
The three grades then are as follows:
I. The Wise
II. The Signorant
III. The Dignorant
Our lives are better when we are Signorant than when we are Dignorant. Or so I shall argue.
[1] Plato, “The Laws,” in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett (1961). At 863c-d. I’ve substituted the usual translation of ‘simple ignorance’ to ‘single ignorance’.